last sunday i walked into my local camera store in fresno ca and since they had stock of d800's i decided to buy my first dslr. i have been shooting for many moons with a 4x5 and 8x10 and even 8x20 along with hasselblad film and digital. i have read on sites that people say they can make mural size prints with this camera's 36 mp sensor yet in the owners manual (page 86) nikon, at the 5:4 aspect ratio, which is how i have mine set up, using 300dpi for printing recommends a maximum size of 16x20. for my film i have them drum scanned at 10900 dpi and maybe an 8x10 would make a full size mural that would take close examination.

David, you don't state whether you own a printer of any sort although you may have implied it.Obviously for any file size and then subsequent print the acceptable resolution is inescapably linked to viewing distance.Even then, there is no one exact right answer.Some images lend themselves to massive enlargement and some don't.

I own Canon equipment (5DII and 5DIII) and have printed single captures to larger than 16X20 to an Epson Pro 7900 using Lightroom as my intermediate to magnificent effect.The uprezzing algorithms in Lr are the same as in Ps however Lr goes one step further and will intelligently apply the correct algorithm depnding on what is required.If you require more of a primer to help you here I unhesitatingly recommend the tutorial series "Camera to Print and Screen" available from LuLa that addresses these issues in depth.

The bottom line is that it will be possible to print very large images from your D800.Some experimentation will be needed with different types of images to clarify how large you can go.

Please feel free to clarify more specific issues that have not been addressed.

i have been printing for a long time using PS and right now i have the epson 7880. i am very critical and i want people to come close to the image to examine parts of the whole. i have 40x50 prints from 8x10 transparencies that can take close inspection. i know if viewed from a distance this becomes less of an issue.

I still think that with appropriate uprezzing (using Ps if you know it well) prints much bigger that 16X20 will be possible - even to your exacting standards.BTW the CPS tutorial recommends uprezzing to 360 if the native resolution is less than 360 and to 720 if the native resolution is greater than 360 in any case with Epson printers.

[...] for my film i have them drum scanned at 10900 dpi and maybe an 8x10 would make a full size mural that would take close examination.

Hi David,

I'm a bit puzzled, what is your question?

Scanning an 8x10" at anything over 8000 ppi is not going to add resolution, just more (fuzzy) pixels. Film doesn't have enough resolution (especially LF film which is also hard to keep flat in anything but a vacuum film holder) to scan at higher resolutions, but at 8000 PPI at least the graininess can be drum scanned scanned in such as way that grain-aliasing will not be a real issue anymore. A benefit of such a scan is that there is relatively little output magnification required for large size output. If we assume wall-sized is 100 inches high then that would require a 12.5x linear magnification for a floor to ceiling magnification.

You are now going to enlarge a 0.945" high image (11.8% of 8") to the same output size, a 105.8x linear magnification.

Are you going to look at an 8.5x fuzzier image? When the original image on the D800 was taken with good optics and technique, well, you may be a bit surprised with the result when you do a proper enlargement ..., it won't look 8.5x fuzzier, but it might not have as much detail either.

last sunday i walked into my local camera store in fresno ca and since they had stock of d800's i decided to buy my first dslr. i have been shooting for many moons with a 4x5 and 8x10 and even 8x20 along with hasselblad film and digital. i have read on sites that people say they can make mural size prints with this camera's 36 mp sensor yet in the owners manual (page 86) nikon, at the 5:4 aspect ratio, which is how i have mine set up, using 300dpi for printing recommends a maximum size of 16x20. for my film i have them drum scanned at 10900 dpi and maybe an 8x10 would make a full size mural that would take close examination.

I think you could easily go to 24 x 36 with this camera without upscaling. Printing at 240dpi on an Epson 7900 would give very high quality prints, at 180dpi you are stlll talking about excellent quality.

i have read on sites that people say they can make mural size prints with this camera's 36 mp sensor yet in the owners manual (page 86) nikon, at the 5:4 aspect ratio, which is how i have mine set up, using 300dpi for printing recommends a maximum size of 16x20.

In general epson prints are optimal at 360 dpi so you can just divide that into your pixel dimensions to see the print dimensions. But having said that, all the points raised are true too, plus it depends on individual images - what I mean by that is an image with huge swaths of minimal detail, such as a clear blue sky, will respond very differently to up-rezzing (to us pixel peepers) than a subject with intricate detail

If you you don't read the (manufacturer's) limitations, there are none.

If I had done the math, I wouldn't have sold 600 20x30 to 30x40 prints to a local client, Most from 12 MP captures many from 10 MP and even 6 MP. About 30 prints were up to 40x60 and were from scans, most quite low, but for those, they were supplied, not crafted by me.

On a previous job (140 prints), most were 20x30 and from 6-12 MP. One of the client's favorite images I ran 24x36 from a 4 MP jpeg (I was new to the camera and was shooting jpegs at an event when the sky opened up back when 1GB cards were in the $600 range). It was just fine. Close up (18-24 inches), I could tell it was from a low-res file. The client couldn't and nobody in the past six years has ever commented that this image may have been from a 4 MB jpeg...

With a properly captured image and great craft, the sky is the limit in reasonably good quality large prints from the D800 and even lower-res cameras. The best way to figure this out is to ignore the math and simple give it a try!

Now rip out that page telling you that you to stop at 16x20. You won't miss it with nearly 500 other pages!

My experience is that going above 1600PPI on slide scans has diminishing returns. There are some benefits of scanning at high resolution but I don't think that you get much more detail past 1600 PPI. Top left 24 MP Digital, right 6x7 Ektar 100 scanned at 9096 PPI bottom left 6x7 Ektar 100 scanned at 3200PPI.

Scanning an 8x10" at anything over 8000 ppi is not going to add resolution, just more (fuzzy) pixels. Film doesn't have enough resolution (especially LF film which is also hard to keep flat in anything but a vacuum film holder) to scan at higher resolutions, but at 8000 PPI at least the graininess can be drum scanned scanned in such as way that grain-aliasing will not be a real issue anymore. A benefit of such a scan is that there is relatively little output magnification required for large size output. If we assume wall-sized is 100 inches high then that would require a 12.5x linear magnification for a floor to ceiling magnification.

You are now going to enlarge a 0.945" high image (11.8% of 8") to the same output size, a 105.8x linear magnification.

Are you going to look at an 8.5x fuzzier image? When the original image on the D800 was taken with good optics and technique, well, you may be a bit surprised with the result when you do a proper enlargement ..., it won't look 8.5x fuzzier, but it might not have as much detail either.